There is not enough education on including the culture and ethnicity of individuals into wellness initiatives

The argument

Professionals in the wellness industry do not receive sufficient training in the areas of cultural humility, and are taught that there is only a narrow margin on how to be "healthy". The training defines a single standard of wellbeing and then equips practitioners to move clients toward it. This fails to allow for alternative possibilities in addition to the western view of health and wellbeing, so a practitioner who encounters a different understanding of what a healthy life looks like has no professional tools for taking it seriously. Nutrition shows the consequence most plainly. Dietitians are not educated on how to include and consider the culture and ethnicity of their patients into nutrition interventions. Traditional ethnic dishes are not properly translated or honoured, which means that when a patient's habitual food is assessed at all, it is assessed against a template built from someone else's cuisine. The dish is treated as a deviation to be corrected rather than a starting point to work from, and advice that asks a patient to abandon the food of their family is advice they are less likely to keep. The problem is structural rather than a matter of individual prejudice. The western view on how to be healthy is the only view considered in the wellness industry, as there is no framework to include other perspectives. Where no framework exists, an individual practitioner's goodwill has little to operate on: they may wish to adapt their guidance and still have no accredited method for doing so, no training that models it, and no standard against which their adaptation could be judged competent. The result falls unevenly. Consequently, BIPOC individuals are unable to receive culturally-sensitive, individualised care that accounts for their cultural traditions, while patients whose traditions already match the template receive care that fits them by default. An industry that delivers worse service to people on the basis of their culture and ethnicity, proponents argue, is racist in its effects whatever its practitioners intend.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that a gap in cultural competence, real as it may be, is better described as a training or quality shortfall than as 'racism,' which implies intent or systemic prejudice; conflating the two dilutes the term and can obscure the concrete fix. They add that nutrition and health science rest on an evidence base that is not merely a 'Western view' and largely applies across populations, so relying on it isn't inherently a racial bias, and that dietetics increasingly trains practitioners in culturally-tailored counselling. On this view the described shortfall is a fixable competency gap that the profession is already addressing, not proof that the wellness industry as such is racist.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A gap in cultural competence is better described as a training or quality shortfall than as 'racism,' which implies intent or systemic prejudice — conflating the two dilutes the term. [Rejecting P2] Nutrition and health science rest on an evidence base that is not merely a 'Western view' and largely applies across populations, so a shared framework isn't inherently a racial bias. [Rejecting P3] Dietetics increasingly trains practitioners in culturally-tailored counselling, so the described shortfall is a fixable competency gap rather than proof the industry is racist.